OPINION
Newcastle United were handed a shock 3-1 defeat courtesy of Championship side Nottingham Forest in the League Cup on Wednesday and Rafa Benitez would have learnt a lot about his squad.
The Magpies boss made several changes to the side that lost 2-1 to Chelsea at the weekend and this saw several players given golden opportunities to showcase why they should be regularly featuring.
However a lot of the players made cases for why they should be nowhere near the first-team instead and it will be intriguing to see what side start the Magpies’ game against Man City on Saturday.
Here are three things Nothing But Newcastle learned from the Magpies’ EFL Cup loss:
Longstaff deserves to be given time
Sean Longstaff would have hoped to have stolen the show against Forest and really given Benitez a decision to make regarding his short-term future. However the 20-year-old midfielder’s performance was okay but it wasn’t anything special. Longstaff at times carelessly lost the ball and was rarely able to greatly aid his side’s attack as the Forest midfield used their experience to consistently stay one step ahead of him. However this doesn’t mean that the midfielder should be shipped out on loan before the window shuts as it might be worth him sticking around the first-team set-up in order to learn from the more experienced members of the Magpies’ squad in training. Longstaff deserves to be given time at St James Park as it was asking a lot of him to deliver the goods against an unbeaten Nottingham Forest side and perhaps he should only look to depart on loan in January.
Kenedy is coasting
Once again Kenedy put in a performance that he will want wiped from history. The pacey Brazilian winger was awful during the 0-0 draw with Cardiff City and despite sitting out the Chelsea game due to being unavailable, didn’t look any better against Forest. Kenedy during the build-up to the first-goal seem to give up once Sam Byram easily bypassed him and left a struggling Ciaran Clark to deal with the determined full-back all by himself. The left-sided flyer appears to be coasting his way through games rather than going all out to deliver excellent performances. Whether Kenedy is distracted by something is arguable as it’s clear that the winger who excelled at St James Park last season hasn’t rocked up as of yet. This means that Benitez should axe the 22-year-old following his Forest display to see if that motivates him in getting back to his best.
Rondon and Joselu should be deployed together
Salomon Rondon came off their bench after replacing Joselu and made the most of his brief cameo by grabbing his first Magpies goal. However considering that Joselu had little to no service throughout the game and still went close to scoring a couple of times, it wasn’t the worst performance by him. Joselu has already defied expectations of fans this season by actually managing to score twice and perhaps Benitez should play the two forwards together rather than stick to just having one up top. With Joselu’s work-rate and Rondon’s physical presence than the pair may be able to strike up partnership which will finally see the goals go flying in for the Magpies this season.
